Space

WASHINGTON — European launch provider Arianespace says that in order to sign a manufacturing contract for the first 14 next-generation Ariane 6 rockets, it first needs European governmental organizations to buy at least four more Ariane 6 missions for the 2020 to 2023 time frame. Arianespace hopes to have seven government, or “institutional” orders for

As the Cassini probe plunged into Saturn, it measured the gravitational pull of the rocks making up its iconic rings – and those readings tell us the rings might be a lot younger than we previously thought. In fact, they might have formed around the same time dinosaurs were walking the Earth, with scientists estimating

WASHINGTON — Blue Origin has rescheduled a test flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle for Jan. 21 as the company edges closer to flying people into space. The company announced Jan. 18 that it had rescheduled the flight, designated NS-10, for Jan. 21 from the company’s test site in West Texas. The announcement coincided

A series of new animations by a NASA scientist show just how zippy – and also how torturously slow – the speed of light can be. Light speed is the fastest that any material object can travel through space. That is, of course, barring the existence of theoretical shortcuts in the fabric of space called wormholes (and

SAN FRANCISCO – QuadSat, a Danish company focused on testing and calibrating satellite antennas with quadcopters drones, plans to recruit satellite engineers with 700,000 euros ($796,000) raised in a seed investment round announced Jan. 16 led by a Danish investment fund and with support from Seraphim Capital. “We intend to expand our technical expertise,” Joakim

Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name). But given their talent for consumption, why don’t black holes just keep expanding and expanding and simply swallow the Universe? Now, one of the world’s top physicists has come up with an

WASHINGTON — Stratolaunch, the company founded by the late billionaire Paul Allen, said Jan. 18 that it is ending work on a launch vehicle that would be flown on the company’s giant aircraft. In a statement to SpaceNews, a company spokesman said that the company was ending work on its own family of launch vehicles

In recent years, the number of extra-solar planets discovered around nearby M-type (red dwarf stars) has grown considerably. In many cases, these confirmed planets have been “Earth-like“, meaning that they are terrestrial (aka rocky) and comparable in size to Earth. These finds have been especially exciting since red dwarf stars are the most common in

WASHINGTON — A new appropriations bill the House plans to vote on next week would provide $21.5 billion for NASA in 2019 but warns that any further problems with the James Webb Space Telescope could lead to its cancellation. House leadership announced late Jan. 17 that they plan to introduce a package of spending bills

An irresistible story swept the world of science and technology journalism Tuesday when China’s space program said that its Moon lander had sprouted a cotton seedling inside a sealed grow container — the first plant ever grown on another world. “China’s Moon mission sees first seeds sprout,” trumpeted the BBC. “Cotton seed sprouts in China’s

The single most significant action in the Missile Defense Review is the endorsement of a program to build a new network of early warning and tracking satellites, which the Pentagon calls a Space Sensor Layer. WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence visited the Pentagon on Thursday to roll out the 2019

The most distant object humanity has ever visited looks something like a spinning snowman or hourglass that’s lost in space. Researchers who work on NASA’s nuclear-powered New Horizons mission released a movie on Tuesday showing the rotation of the mountain-size rock, which is known formally as (486958) 2014 MU69. (It’s more commonly referred to as “Ultima

WASHINGTON — Isotropic Systems, a startup developing modular antenna systems for satellite communications, has raised $14 million from a group of investors led by Boeing’s HorizonX venture investment arm. In an interview, Isotropic founder and CEO John Finney said Boeing and Isotropic agreed to several “strategic elements” that go beyond the cash investment. “We are

Scientists searching for signs of seasonal storms on Titan have finally found the smoking gun. A slick shimmer spotted on the north pole of the Saturnian moon is the first evidence of rainfall in the hemisphere – the start of summer in the north. It’s the evidence astronomers have been waiting years to see, since

PHOENIX – The U.S. Air Force has obligated about $7 million of its $20 million budget for commercial satellite weather data. “We’ve still got dollars available for this,” said John Dreher, weather systems branch chief at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. Congress provided the Air Force with a total of about $20 million in

Are you sick of nature? Always doing beautiful things at inconvenient times? Well, a Japanese satellite may be just the thing for you. Rather than forcing you to wait for one of Earth’s 22 or so natural annual meteor showers, it discharges an artificial one, on command. Well, in theory, anyway. But we’re about to find

Updated 11:00 p.m. Eastern. WASHINGTON — Less than a week after laying off 10 percent of its employees, SpaceX said Jan. 16 that it plans to shift work on at least prototypes of its next-generation launch system from Los Angeles to Texas. In a statement, SpaceX said it was now planning to build prototypes of

In just a few days, the Moon will turn a shade of rust and loom larger in the sky than usual in a relatively rare astronomical event. For the half of the planet fortunate enough to see it, it’s a chance to see two fascinating spectacles combined in what’s known as a ‘super blood moon’

WASHINGTON — Aircraft-tracking startup Aireon is borrowing $200 million through a Deutsche Bank-led group of investor funds, the company said Jan. 16. Aireon said it signed the credit facility Dec. 21, and that it used the new funds to pay satellite operator Iridium $35 million before the end of 2018 for hosting its sensor payloads

China says it has grown the first plants on the Moon as part of its historic mission to the far side. China landed its Chang’e 4 spacecraft on the Moon’s far side on January 3, becoming the first nation to do so. It has now achieved another first: a seed successfully germinating while on the